Myth 1: Lots of people are going to lose most or all their benefits
Before Labour’s changes to the benefits system were announced, Jeremy Corbyn and Independent Alliance MPs claimed that “devastating cuts” were planned by a government set upon “slashing disability benefits”. BBC News interviewed people who didn’t know what the measures would be, and asked them what their lives would be like “without benefits” – implying that the people interviewed, who clearly had serious health conditions, might lose all of their support. A Green Party spokesperson warned that Labour was “taking benefits away to pay for defence”.
It is standard practice to allow a whiff of government policy out into the national conversation before it’s actually announced, and backbench MPs and journalists are doing their jobs by representing those affected. But talking about the benefits system carries an additional responsibility.
One of the major problems with the welfare system as it currently stands is that many people wrongly believe seeking work will lead to their benefits being sharply cut or removed. Hence the announcement today (18 March) of a “right to try” returning to work, which aims to de-risk job seeking for people on benefits. However well-meaning the MPs and others who have spent weeks criticising the plan, they may well have been contributing to the impression among claimants that Liz Kendall is making it even more risky for them to seek work.
Myth 2: It’s too easy to get on to benefits
Commentators on GB News and in the Times have claimed that it’s possible to phone up one’s doctor, claim to be anxious and be signed on to a lifetime of jobless frivolity. This is not the case. Bill Wells, who spent 40 years working in the welfare system, told me that because it is in fact really quite difficult to get access to benefits – it can take months – it becomes almost a full-time job, which is one of the things that deters people from seeking an actual full-time job.
Continuing to receive benefits is also not as simple as some commentators have argued. Tom Pollard of the New Economics Foundation says many claimants feel their interactions with the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to be “confrontational” or “adversarial” and that engaging with support might be “used as evidence against them”. People who actually work in and around the benefits system know that the quality of the relationship between the state and the claimant can make all the difference about the level of support they will access.
Myth 3: People are making up mental health problems to get free money
This is quietly implied (and occasionally loudly declared) when the problem of overdiagnosis is raised. Which is not to say that there is no overdiagnosis, spurious claims or inaccuracies –but that this is part of a wider picture. Large numbers of people who aren’t claiming benefits are also being diagnosed with mental health conditions, including children and people who are in work. Mental illnesses are being more widely recognised and treated, and mental ill-health is a growing problem: a study by the IFS recently identified thousands of additional “deaths of despair” from a higher working-age mortality rate.
As Hannah Barnes explains in her recent review of two books on overdiagnosis, what the term (as used by Wes Streeting and others) really refers to is not dishonesty at all, but diagnosis that isn’t helpful, and which may be harmful, to the person being diagnosed. This is an important question, when being put in a certain category can lead a person away from the labour market. The employment minister, Alison McGovern, told me recently about research the DWP has conducted which suggests there are around 200,000 people on health-related benefits – many of whom “have been told by the government that they can’t work” – who would like to work, now, if they had the right support.
Myth 4: Cutting benefits can solve two problems at once
Today’s plan is designed to address two entirely different problems: first, the lack of fiscal headroom for government spending. Second, the issue that large numbers of young people are dropping out of the labour market due to ill health. Solving problem two would eventually help with problem one, or at least make it less acute for future Chancellors.
However, spending less money immediately to solve problem one is not going to clear up problem two; they are different and potentially contradictory objectives. If the labour market is affected by a health crisis, then it is affected by a crisis of health, not a crisis of state spending.
This is a very complex area and there is much more to get into – for a longer analysis, please take a look at this week’s magazine: Why Britain Stopped Working.
[See more: Why Britain Isn’t Working]
Content from our partners
Related
